A fitness journal ideas make a great process to monitor your workouts, watch your progress, find what parts you can enhance, and also trace your feelings right after a specific workout.

A fitness journal is also a key tool in your weight loss success and your fitness goals, for two simple reasons:

#1. Make a Task

You are 50% more likely to do something when you write it down, whether it’s a long-term goal, a short-term goal or a simple to-do list.

There’s a reason top life coaches and inspirational speakers tell you to bullet journaling your goals.

It makes a huge difference in whether you reach them. Mainly because once you’ve written it down, it becomes more real. Something you can actually visualize yourself doing, or becoming.

Planning out and writing down your workouts for the week takes your workouts from something that you’d like to get done. To documented daily goals with a larger purpose: to get you to your ultimate health and fitness goal.

Once you’ve started to plan out and then record your workouts, you can not only be more consistent with your workouts. But you can also start to see what you’re actually doing, as well as what you’re not doing.

#2. Numbers don’t lie

It’s very easy to deceive yourself into thinking you’ve been working hard.

Hold yourself accountable to what you are really doing, and, on a fun note, celebrate all your documented hard work!

Just showing up is an important step to success, but if you’re literally just showing up and not doing much more, you’re not going to see the results you’d like.

Are you where you’d like to be for miles ran or minutes on cardio?

How many weeks are you making it to the gym as many times as you’d like?

Are you really weightlifting for every muscle group, or are you playing favorites and only doing the weight routines you like the best?

Numbers don’t lie! Se where you’re at now and get yourself to where you want to be by tracking your workouts and your progress.

Tracking your workouts will also allow you to see your undeniable successes. Such as consistent workouts, weight loss, losing inches, and gaining strength. All of which you should celebrate accordingly along the way to achieve your goals.

In a fitness journal you can also start making note of how you like new exercises and workout routines. If you’re having a low energy day, go back and look for workouts that made you feel energized and uplifted.

If you’re starting a new workout regimen, like adding more weightlifting into your workout routine. Please make sure to add in a before picture to your fitness journal ideas. So you can visually track the changes in your physique as well as your workouts.

To start your own fitness journal, I highly suggest you go old school, with a pen and paper.

There are a lot of fitness apps out there! But taking the time to look at your phone often leads to breaking up your workout with distracting notifications, etc.

It also tends to take longer to open an app and track it there than just quickly jotting it down it in your fitness journal ideas.

You can buy a pre-made one, with places for before and after photos, daily workout trackers, etc.

I like pretty things, so I chose a pink Lilly Pulitzer notebook for my fitness journal ideas. Something as small as making it your favorite color can help in motivating you to take the time to track your workouts.

Here’s what to include in your fitness journal ideas:

A Vision Page

On the cover (or one of the opening pages) have images and quotes that inspire you. Ones that help you keep a strong vision of where you want to see yourself and that help you keep going, even on dippy days.

A Weekly Workout Plan

Taking into account your schedule and what you can realistically fit in. Also, make a weekly plan of what you will do each day. Such as where you will do it: home, gym, outdoors, etc. Make sure to account for your rest days as well! Clearly, good handwriting isn’t necessary!

A Daily Description of What You Did for Your Workout

Include your cardio, weightlifting, making note of each exercise, weight, and reps, your toning, stretching, etc.

This is where you can also keep track of how you felt, physically and mentally after particular workouts.

Make a note if a particular exercise was hard or easy, especially in regards to weightlifting. Watch as that exercise that was once hard becoming progressively easier and you have to try to make it harder!

New workouts you’ve found and would like to try:

Write down or print out workouts you’d like to try. If you’re feeling like you need to switch up your workouts, you’ll have ideas ready at hand.

You can also include weekly meal plans (like I have in my weekly workout plan), as well as a food journal of what you eat each day.

The easiest way to do this is to combine the daily exercise log with a food journal, and your weekly workout plan with a weekly meal plan.